The tiny education computer won't be released until at least the end of February.

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British school children will need to keep waiting for their Micro:bit, the compact, low-cost, Raspberry Pi-like computer that the BBC revealed last year as part of its "Make it Digital" campaign, which aimed to get youngsters interested in coding. The device is now expected to reach teachers by the end of February at the very earliest.

"Fine-tuning" is the issue this time around, according to BBC Learning executive Cerys Griffiths. Speaking at the recent Bett education trade show—where Samsung is due to show off the Micro:bit Android app—Griffiths apologised for delay, describing the Micro:bit as "very complex, very sophisticated, and very new." [Thank the gods that the BBC isn't trying to make a laptop or something, eh? -Ed]

This is the second time that the release of the Micro:bit has been pushed back. It was originally supposed to reach schools in September 2015, before being handed out to about a million Year 7 (age 11-12) students. The BBC then announced that distribution would not take place until "at least after Christmas," due to power supply-related problems.

"What we were really hoping for was that the teachers would get their devices before Christmas," Griffiths said. "But our commitment to teachers has always been that we would get them the devices first to give them time to play and get familiar with them." Indeed, it's teachers that will receive devices first, if all goes according to plan this time, with students receiving theirs around the end of the spring term in late March. Mass distribution likely won't happen until the summer term in April, or perhaps the start of the next school year in September.

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The much-anticipated Micro:bit measures about 5cm by 4cm. It features Bluetooth, an accelerometer, 25 programmable LEDs, and a compass, along with a 32-bit ARM Cortex M0 CPU. However, since the announcement of the Micro:bit, Raspberry Pi has unveiled and released its own low-cost device, the Raspberry Pi Zero. It features more powerful hardware—including a 1GHz ARM11 CPU, 512MB of RAM, and a mini HDMI socket that can output at 1080p60—priced at just £4/$5.